Butterflies are free to fly
by chrysalis escapist
Summary: A bit of chaos theory, but don't blame the butterflies. Stella&Mac plus the rest of the team, well kind of...


**Disclaimer: I ****don't own any of them, never have, never will…**

**Oh, and: swearing ahead…but not much**

**No idea what came over me here, but maybe someone out there will like it anyway?**** Please let me know what you think.**

Feet running towards him, urgently. A voice calling his name, urgently.

He doesn't look; his eyes are fixed on a spot somewhere below. Not on the ground, on an atom of oxygen somewhere in the air, not drawn in.

Hands on his shoulders shaking him, urgently. Words coming from a mouth with the force of bullets.

He doesn't respond. He can't hear them though they pierce through him.

The sound of more feet, softer but still urgent. Another voice, calling the other back, but also calling him. Hands, pushing the other back, but also on his shoulder, gentler.

He still doesn't see them, sees only the memory of what happened seemingly moments ago. Burned into his retina, burned into his mind.

His name, repeated. Again and again, in different voices. A choir gathering around him. Calling him back, back into reality, against his will.

"Adam! Bloody hell, talk to me! Talk to us!" sounds like Danny.

"Adam, what happened?" could be Lindsay.

Still he says nothing. What he thinks has happened he doesn't want to say, does not want to confirm. One wrong word, moving an atom of oxygen in the air. A chain reaction and everything goes wrong.

Hands press him down, in the direction of his soul. Only now he sees his own hands, covered in blood. Not his, theirs. Sees the blood on the floor, butterfly wings spread still. Those whose blood it is gone. Floating somewhere between now and then.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The others begin to look around, assessing the situation by force of habit. Shreds of a web hang before them. Where butterflies got caught. Some dewdrops hanging on, most already on the ground, blood diamonds. Another dewdrop falls, splinters into a thousand tinkles. Sounds that drop through the still air and are lost.

Sounds that dropped like so many shards, slicing through lives, shattering existences? Stella and Mac, or Mac and Stella, he can't tell. Who was holding on to whom? Who was leading in this _dance macabre_ they were caught up in?

He watches the others. Lindsay crouching on the ground, running gloved fingers through a swirl of reddened glass that seems to suck at them. Sid standing by praying fiercely that his services will not be needed. Danny muttering creatively at the glass. Flack setting his face into an angry mask at no one because there are no suspects. Hawkes drawing unwanted conclusions from the amount of blood he sees.

Another drop of glass falls, another sound dies with it.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

They float, blue wings flickering against blue skies. Still dancing around each other, holding on to each other but never quite touching. Diamond dust glittering around them. A memory of what happened.

"Somehow I was hoping for glass walls to come down differently." she says with a faint reflection of a smirk.

"Have there been glass walls between us?" he asks.

"Not anymore." Another smirk as the irony of what she's just said dawns on her. The sun reflects in her eyes as she looks at him, corrects her statement, "There have never really been any."

She hopes that it is just a dream, hopes that he will still be there when she wakes up. He thinks that it must be a dream, wants to wake up to find her still there.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The others look on as they fight. One after the other, taking their turns, their hopes fuelled by seeing their friends' will to live.

Connected as they were when they fell they have been left together, close. And their eyes open slowly, and hands reach out, searching for each other, meet. Tell each other, "We are still here, together."

An atom of oxygen, resting on butterfly wings, lifted in flight.


End file.
